How Howitzers Howitzer: A Breakdown.

Hey Guys, I just finished my number crunching on non-rocket artillery: https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/g1ikmr/howitzers_and_you_big_guns_and_what_they_do/ Howitzers and You: Big Guns and What They Do

My conclusion came down to Sexton/Priest need a pop decrease (Sexton to 10-12, Priest to 13), Sexton needs its gardening Super-Charged shells to have normal AoE (2.5 Mid AOE, not 2), and ML/20 needs an extra round base barrage, currently Vet 1 just brings it up to par. Also, EITHER something special for the ML/20 another another round/an ability or leIF needs to lose Counter Barrage. Statistically, they are almost exactly the same gun (once ML/20 has 9 shots), just leIF has serious icing on top.

I had to do a major revision after MMX pointed out Max Distance Scatter.

...Mobile Howitzers have some stupid DPS/Area due to Max Scatter being quite low. Like, caps at 75% of total range or less low.

Takeaways:

1.There is weird stuff afoot. Use your mobile howitzers at max range, cause getting marginally closer gives VERY marginally better results. And the only increased scatter is angle based (side to side). This results in huge damage concentrations compared to fixed howitzers as range gets higher and higher. The PRIEST is the best in-vision concentrated barrager at 160 distance PERIOD. The only exception to this rule is Counter Barrage.

Mobile Howitzers are WEIRD. This also reinforces my belief the Stuka is a Creeping Barrage Mobile Howitzer, not Rocket Artillery. Minimal long range scatter (SZF has 0 of ANY KIND) makes a good back FoW back breaker.

STILL, FIX THE SUPERCHARGED SHELLS. Stop making that additional hidden game knowledge.

2. ML/20 needs to be brought up to 9 shells baseline. AND maybe given Counter Barrage, or something. That gun is quite depressing relatively.

3.Fix leFH Friendly Fire. That sucker does half damage, its a HUGE outlier. All on-map artillery (UKF base arti is off-map for all intents and purposes) does negligible friendly fire.

Interesting work.

Thing you need to keep in mind:
self-propelled artillery is allot more difficult to kill. They can take a direct hit and survive, they can move out of the way and are harder to kill with offmap.

Super charge round not only have allot more range but also are on different CD of the normal barrage. Sexton can fire almost continuously with it.

The barrage have different CD and the units have different vet bonus so the comparison at different vet level will probably give you different results.

Both Royal arty commander and infatry commander have access to stock reckon pass and offmap that can kill a Lefh.

In sort I do not really agree with the suggestions.

Also, EITHER something special for the ML/20 another another round/an ability or leIF needs to lose Counter Barrage. Statistically, they are almost exactly the same gun (once ML/20 has 9 shots), just leIF has serious icing on top.

The Soviet ML-20 is typically supported by Katuysha barrages which are a threat even to heavy tanks, compared to the Panzerwerfer that is mostly an infantry mass suppression tool. These howitzers don't operate in a vacuum.

The Soviet ML-20 is typically supported by Katuysha barrages which are a threat even to heavy tanks, compared to the Panzerwerfer that is mostly an infantry mass suppression tool. These howitzers don't operate in a vacuum.

What rank is that "typically" at?
No one sane goes for arty AND katy outside of bottom tier 4v4.

No one sane also believes katy is of any use against tanks and werfer not, when werfer salvo is much more concentrated and penetration and deflection of both are the same.

Very interesting breakdown. I do agree that the ML20 does feel a bit lacking compared to the leif.

Interesting work.

Thing you need to keep in mind:
self-propelled artillery is allot more difficult to kill. They can take a direct hit and survive, they can move out of the way and are harder to kill with offmap.

Super charge round not only have allot more range but also are on different CD of the normal barrage. Sexton can fire almost continuously with it.

The barrage have different CD and the units have different vet bonus so the comparison at different vet level will probably give you different results.

Both Royal arty commander and infatry commander have access to stock reckon pass and offmap that can kill a Lefh.

In sort I do not really agree with the suggestions.

Pretty much +1

Mobile artillery has the advantage over static as it can constantly re-position.

Would like to see counter battery on the Lefh changed for something that requires even the smallest amount of micro.

Otherwise artillery isn't in a bad spot at the moment.

self-propelled artillery is cancer in this game...when a good player use them...there is no good way to counter them. you sit in a 3v3 or 4v4 behind your teammmates armys and bombard the enemy into the ground without fear to lose them.

they need to get something like you cant move them after you shoot with them for 30sec

The Soviet ML-20 is typically supported by Katuysha barrages which are a threat even to heavy tanks, compared to the Panzerwerfer that is mostly an infantry mass suppression tool. These howitzers don't operate in a vacuum.

Katjusha barrages are a threat to heavy tanks since last patch?

Damn. And they say UKF is op.

The suggestion I saw was something like a 15 shell barrage of weaker shells. Want value? gotta keep shelling. swap barrage duration from the fixed guns to the mobile buddies (Credit to Stein Grenadier for the idea). Maybe REALLY hammer acceleration and movement speed.

Mobile arti is ALREADY the mega cancer, the Stuka Zu Fus is basically a creeping barrage howitzer. Might be worth looking at fixing it, or standardizing it.

The Super Charged rounds just need to be fixed cause its just not explained anywhere nore intuitive that Super Rounds just suck.

Also, i've been getting power wiped by double werfer for weeks.

The suggestion I saw was something like a 15 shell barrage of weaker shells. Want value? gotta keep shelling. swap barrage durations from the fixed guns to the mobile buddies (Credit to Stein Grenadier for the idea).

The Super Charged rounds just need to be fixed cause its just not explained anywhere nore intuitive that Super Rounds just suck.

Also, i've been getting power wiped by double werfer for weeks.

They do not.

Actually Ro.A is a very strong commander in large mod and the ammount of arty in bring down is simply ridiculous. It does not need are more buff and it should probably be nerfed.

They do not.

Actually Ro.A is a very strong commander in large mod and the ammount of arty in bring down is simply ridiculous. It does not need are more buff and it should probably be nerfed.

Did you read the data? the shells do 10% less for no described reason, looks like someone typo'd the AoE number. I'd like to not have another one of these special little game knowledge things.

Ro.A is MASSIVELY muni intensive and Coordinated Barrage call-in is garbage 25 lb shells. The real value is in the 7 sniper shells if you maintain LoS. How are you getting shelled more than usual against a UKF?

Also, which Super Charged rounds? the Valentine ones or the Creeping? Creeping Barrage has some weird cooldown stuff, takes longer to cooldown post barrage than the barrage does.

It's also Sexton rounds. These are not the Random Acts of Death of most artillery, they have a pretty tiny 80 dmg area. I've watched many a player just retreat with minimal losses.

Did you read the data? the shells do 10% less for no described reason, looks like someone typo'd the AoE number. I'd like to not have another one of these special little game knowledge things.

Ro.A is MASSIVELY muni intensive and Coordinated Barrage call-in is garbage 25 lb shells. The real value is in the 7 sniper shells if you maintain LoS. How are you getting shelled more than usual against a UKF?

Also, which Super Charged rounds? the Valentine ones or the Creeping? Creeping Barrage has some weird cooldown stuff, takes longer to cooldown post barrage than the barrage does.

It's also Sexton rounds. These are not the Random Acts of Death of most artillery, they have a pretty tiny 80 dmg area. I've watched many a player just retreat with minimal losses.

I have read the data and I have played the game. I actually abused Ro.A commander since patch and I have gained 300 rank in 4vs4 since the patch...

Concentrate barrage is one of the lowest CP off map it is dirty cheap. The combination of air bust shell (normally needing anvil unlock) and normal shell will force enemy off the field.

The sexton has low CD becoming even lower with veterancy.

The creeping barrage has very little scatter and ruin OKW track.

The victor barrage from valentine allows sexton to fire even when on CD while it has enoug range to so from the comfort of the base.

Perimeter over-watch is broken being far superior to sector arty with crazy duration and very fast tracking.

Ro. Arty does need any buffs.

Hey Guys, I just finished my number crunching on non-rocket artillery: https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/g1ikmr/howitzers_and_you_big_guns_and_what_they_do/ Howitzers and You: Big Guns and What They Do

My conclusion came down to Sexton/Priest need a pop decrease (Sexton to 10-12, Priest to 13), Sexton needs its gardening Super-Charged shells to have normal AoE (2.5 Mid AOE, not 2), and ML/20 needs an extra round base barrage, currently Vet 1 just brings it up to par. Also, EITHER something special for the ML/20 another another round/an ability or leIF needs to lose Counter Barrage. Statistically, they are almost exactly the same gun (once ML/20 has 9 shots), just leIF has serious icing on top.

(just realized this post has become super long, sorry for that)

MMX and I have been working independently on theoretical AoE calculations as well.
To be honest some those numbers don't say too much, that is my conclusion from thinking about it and discussing with him for quite some time. MMX's work has the advantage of also simulating scatter and thereby more "in-game like" scenarios. But let's break it down point by point to be more precise:

First table: Overall AoE damage. Represents the AoE "volume".
This is the core issue since all other calculations rely on this. This is also what I tended to calculate when I set up my Excel sheet. But to be honest this does not say much by far. The issues here are:
- what are we shooting at? All of these units are mostly used against infantry. So if we want to compare against infantry, we need to cap all damage at 80, otherwise overkill damage will be factored in which falsifies the data.
- The damage is not normalized and hard to normalize. Damage in the inner core is WAY more valuable than on the edges, since it can insta-kill models or bring them down to a point where small arms can quickly finish them off. However, the outer third of the circle where the damage is abysemal often contributes a whole lot to the overall damage volume.
- Against somewhat decent players, you usually only shoot at 1-2 squads at most. So most of the (often outer circle) damage will not be applied.
- The damage in the inner core is also more like to be actually applied, of course depending on the scatter.

This leads to the next point:
Normalization vs scatter. This is by itself good. One minor issue you make is that you neglected the scatter_offset (haven't checked, but I assume those units also have that value; Please correct me here if I am wrong). From the current scatter model, this value basically leads to a larger scatter area by moving the scatter center point further back. However, scatter_offset might be the same for all units, so the introduced error is the same or at least similar.
While this value is better in terms of it shows which units are better able to really damage the intended area, it still gets fed "bad" data due to the above reasons.

Afterwards, you normalize vs time etc which is all fine apart from the already mentioned base data.


Now don't get me wrong, I don't want to shit talk your work here. I like this kind of approach and I think for generally comparing those units within the group itself it can show some differences. BUT:
We should keep in mind that nobody knows how this data actually translates into in-game performance. Does 1000 more damage volume help you? Well it at least does not hurt. If it's overkill damage than it does not help against infantry, just against buildings. Maybe it does not help at all because the damage comes from small damage values in a large outer area of the AoE circle. But since the cannon tends to hit well the outer areas are rarely applied, etc etc. Reliability is a huge thing. The B4 can kill a heavy tank, but people don't like it because your investment into it might only pay off every Xth game or so, while it single handedly wins you the next one because two shots are on target. Then there is shock value. The air time of the shell, which is probably one of the most important things. Unit density (mostly depending on the game mode played). Now obviously you did not claim that your numbers would factor all this in and your calculations are the end-all for defining the performance on this unit. But as I said, as much as I like and also trust in theoretical calculations, we should keep in mind that they have some shortcoming that do not allow us to really draw conclusions for the game itself if we do not correct for them.

Now the thing I think is probably be the "best" indicator is what MMX is currently doing: Making a simulation against a "real" squad. Calculate how long a unit takes to kill a whole squad. Obviously this still does not simulate moving of the squad etc, but it's at least something. If you want to put real work into this, I'd recommend getting in touch with MMX.

Hey Guys, I just finished my number crunching on non-rocket artillery: https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/g1ikmr/howitzers_and_you_big_guns_and_what_they_do/ Howitzers and You: Big Guns and What They Do

My conclusion came down to Sexton/Priest need a pop decrease (Sexton to 10-12, Priest to 13), Sexton needs its gardening Super-Charged shells to have normal AoE (2.5 Mid AOE, not 2), and ML/20 needs an extra round base barrage, currently Vet 1 just brings it up to par. Also, EITHER something special for the ML/20 another another round/an ability or leIF needs to lose Counter Barrage. Statistically, they are almost exactly the same gun (once ML/20 has 9 shots), just leIF has serious icing on top.

I agree that the Sexton is worse and the Priest is similar to the LEFH, but not sure I like the arty buffs of the last patch, and relatively sure that I don't want more arty in a game. I've been seeing games where teams will have 5-7 howitzers on the field. They're really not that fun. Units randomly disappear. Many games feel like Sittard Summer all over again. I think I've won most of them, but even the wins aren't that fun. I lost my last game last night due to arty randomly wiping squads and repair engineers well behind the front lines.

If they were to take counter-battery away from the LEFH, then I'd like to see them give it smoke.

I did some heat-to-head testing of the LEFH versus ML20. The LEFH wins most of the time even without counter-battery. The difference wasn't that great though and I didn't care enough about it to ask for any buffs.

We should keep in mind that nobody knows how this data actually translates into in-game performance.

[…]

There's also the fact that the ML-20, Priest and Sexton generally get to shoot at - on average - smaller sized squads and the most defensive faction. And that the Allies have it a lot easier countering LeFHs because they are static howitzers (compared to Priest and Sexton being mobile and more durable) and because the Allies have more recon + offmap options.

Katjusha barrages are a threat to heavy tanks since last patch?

Damn. And they say UKF is op.

He’s right about rocket artillery being a big threat to heavy tanks... just in the wrong way.

Just yeet on the repairing engineers and he’ll be forced to retreat them, and then you can dive his un repaired heavy with your repaired tanks!

On the topic of self-propelled howitzers, I’d like to see the barrages lock them in place and make Stuka dive bomb able to one shot them more consistently to bring them in line with the ml20 and LefH 18

(just realized this post has become super long, sorry for that)

MMX and I have been working independently on theoretical AoE calculations as well.
To be honest some those numbers don't say too much, that is my conclusion from thinking about it and discussing with him for quite some time. MMX's work has the advantage of also simulating scatter and thereby more "in-game like" scenarios. But let's break it down point by point to be more precise:

First table: Overall AoE damage. Represents the AoE "volume".
This is the core issue since all other calculations rely on this. This is also what I tended to calculate when I set up my Excel sheet. But to be honest this does not say much by far. The issues here are:
- what are we shooting at? All of these units are mostly used against infantry. So if we want to compare against infantry, we need to cap all damage at 80, otherwise overkill damage will be factored in which falsifies the data.
- The damage is not normalized and hard to normalize. Damage in the inner core is WAY more valuable than on the edges, since it can insta-kill models or bring them down to a point where small arms can quickly finish them off. However, the outer third of the circle where the damage is abysemal often contributes a whole lot to the overall damage volume.
- Against somewhat decent players, you usually only shoot at 1-2 squads at most. So most of the (often outer circle) damage will not be applied.
- The damage in the inner core is also more like to be actually applied, of course depending on the scatter.

This leads to the next point:
Normalization vs scatter. This is by itself good. One minor issue you make is that you neglected the scatter_offset (haven't checked, but I assume those units also have that value; Please correct me here if I am wrong). From the current scatter model, this value basically leads to a larger scatter area by moving the scatter center point further back. However, scatter_offset might be the same for all units, so the introduced error is the same or at least similar.
While this value is better in terms of it shows which units are better able to really damage the intended area, it still gets fed "bad" data due to the above reasons.

Afterwards, you normalize vs time etc which is all fine apart from the already mentioned base data.


Now don't get me wrong, I don't want to shit talk your work here. I like this kind of approach and I think for generally comparing those units within the group itself it can show some differences. BUT:
We should keep in mind that nobody knows how this data actually translates into in-game performance. Does 1000 more damage volume help you? Well it at least does not hurt. If it's overkill damage than it does not help against infantry, just against buildings. Maybe it does not help at all because the damage comes from small damage values in a large outer area of the AoE circle. But since the cannon tends to hit well the outer areas are rarely applied, etc etc. Reliability is a huge thing. The B4 can kill a heavy tank, but people don't like it because your investment into it might only pay off every Xth game or so, while it single handedly wins you the next one because two shots are on target. Then there is shock value. The air time of the shell, which is probably one of the most important things. Unit density (mostly depending on the game mode played). Now obviously you did not claim that your numbers would factor all this in and your calculations are the end-all for defining the performance on this unit. But as I said, as much as I like and also trust in theoretical calculations, we should keep in mind that they have some shortcoming that do not allow us to really draw conclusions for the game itself if we do not correct for them.

Now the thing I think is probably be the "best" indicator is what MMX is currently doing: Making a simulation against a "real" squad. Calculate how long a unit takes to kill a whole squad. Obviously this still does not simulate moving of the squad etc, but it's at least something. If you want to put real work into this, I'd recommend getting in touch with MMX.

Dang! Thanks for the reply. Yep, I agree with what you said. My last howitzer analysis was entirely on Death Zone (that 80 number), which REALLY had funky results (Sexton was like...40% or more worse than leIF we know it isn't really). Overkill for arti is actually up to 160 or more, due to green cover and target-damage types. Full health Team Weapons in Green Cover live through DIRECT SZF shots with 20 hp per model (found that out when an MG in a trench lived through it). Really depends on what you are trying to do.

My current hypothesis on all artillery is it should have a pretty tiny Death zone, as the huge zones on some guns are prone to wipe pain and un-stoppable veterancy degradation. Wipes should be because you screwed up or got out played, not cause someone clicked a single ability and waited. having long shelling barrages, large AoE, low per-shell damage would separate Howitzers and Rocket arti. Need more data and good players to verify any of this.

I'll get in touch with MMX.

that's some interesting analysis, thanks a lot for sharing!
as hannibal already pointed out we've both been working on very similar scatter and AoE-related projects lately, and i think your approach is a good way to do it.

after reading over your methodology, i'd suggest a few edits to your formulae to get a bit more accurate results though:

i think the approximation you used for the double integral under the AoE curve is quite crude and calculating the precise "volume" is actually not much more complicated than what you've already done.
instead of approximating the area under the curve with rectangles and integrating to get the volumes of the resulting cylinders, you can split the complete area into right trapezoids and calculate the precise volume for the corresponding cone sections via pi*h/3*(r^2+rR+R^2), where r and R are the inner and outer radii and h is the damage at each radius (n, m, f)

with respect to the scatter cone, there is one important varable that you may have missed from what i've read: distance_scatter_max.
this will cap the horizontal scatter you get from distance x dynamic_scatter_ratio (this even caps the FoW multiplier!) and lead to smaller actual scatter areas, especially at max range.

apart from this i think your method works great to get a somewhat reliable impression for raw or "on paper" performance of arty pieces and a handy gauge for comparison. however, relating this to in-game performance is a bit tricky, due to the sheer volume of additional variables factoring in here, as pointed out by others already.
i've been working on a simulation to get actual squad sizes and formations into the equation for quite some time, which i plan to release soon(tm). with a few modifications this would probably work well for artillery and indirect fire, too.

that's some interesting analysis, thanks a lot for sharing!
as hannibal already pointed out we've both been working on very similar scatter and AoE-related projects lately, and i think your approach is a good way to do it.

after reading over your methodology, i'd suggest a few edits to your formulae to get a bit more accurate results though:

i think the approximation you used for the double integral under the AoE curve is quite crude and calculating the precise "volume" is actually not much more complicated than what you've already done.
instead of approximating the area under the curve with rectangles and integrating to get the volumes of the resulting cylinders, you can split the complete area into right trapezoids and calculate the precise volume for the corresponding cone sections via pi*h/3*(r^2+rR+R^2), where r and R are the inner and outer radii and h is the damage at each radius (n, m, f)

with respect to the scatter cone, there is one important varable that you may have missed from what i've read: distance_scatter_max.
this will cap the horizontal scatter you get from distance x dynamic_scatter_ratio (this even caps the FoW multiplier!) and lead to smaller actual scatter areas, especially at max range.

apart from this i think your method works great to get a somewhat reliable impression for raw or "on paper" performance of arty pieces and a handy gauge for comparison. however, relating this to in-game performance is a bit tricky, due to the sheer volume of additional variables factoring in here, as pointed out by others already.
i've been working on a simulation to get actual squad sizes and formations into the equation for quite some time, which i plan to release soon(tm). with a few modifications this would probably work well for artillery and indirect fire, too.

MMX! MY MAN! Yep. What you did is a better approximation. Should be almost exactly the same. I got lazy on properly doing the areas. Should be REALLY CLOSE though, if not equal.

Distance Scatter Max is a weird beast that really makes some guns over perform scatter-wise. Both Mobile Howitzers are actually constrained by this at 124 range. Thats 3/4ths range. It REALLY improves long distance scatter, with max scatter for Sexton and Priest should be 20 and 22.5. It's actually fixed at 15.5. That is HUUUUUUGE long range accuracy bonuses.

leIF and ML/20 only get to exploit this once they get Vet 3 and the extra range. Give me a minute, gotta get my spread sheet including Max Scatter. Might do some disturbing things.